Some Exterior Embellishments

Time to dress up the outside of the shop a little. I wanted shutters on the two gable end windows and the lower window on the western wall. Actually, what I REALLY wanted was operational shutters with iron pintle hinges and decorative shutter dogs; but my last name isn't Rockefeller. I DID think that I could do better than the vinyl home center shutters though, so I went down to said home center and picked up some 1 X 6 cedar boards. I've never used cedar before but that stuff will make you feel like Hercules with a hand saw. The stuff rips and planes like butter; crosscuts nicely also.

There really wasn't much to making these shutters. The upper windows are narrow and two of the cedar boards butted together was within an inch of being half the width of the windows; close enough for non-functional shutters. After jointing the edges to a nice fit I edge glued the two boards together and then ripped some battens to 3 1/2", smoothed and chamfered the edges with a plane, and screwed them on from the backside so no screws show on the front. A couple coats of some black exterior latex finished the first pair off nicely. With the first window's shutters done and hung, I was satisfied with the look and made my other two sets. The larger lower window is 32" wide so three of the 1 X 6's per shutter worked out perfect. I just made the battens a little wider to keep the scale pleasingly proportionate. Hopefully I can get a few coats of paint on these and get them hung this weekend. I think they'll set things off nicely.

So far the shop is a real pleasure to work out of. :)